Hand held powered tube cutters and treating tools are already known in the prior art, and they are useful in, cutting tubes or pipes on the work site and in restricted spaces. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 6,065,212 discloses one such tube cutter. Other prior art cutters are different from the present invention in that they do not provide for continuous cutter feeding, nor for automatic settings for various tube or pipe diameters to be cut, nor for efficient constant cutter feed systems without shock loads to the tube.
The present invention provides for a tool of a powered tube cutter which automatically adjusts for different diametrical sizes of tubes. There are self-centering guides which act to place the cutting mechanism centered with the tube, and there is provision for visibly aligning the cutter on the tube when the tube is disposed within the tool. Further, the amount of cutting penetration for each revolution of cutting action can be selected, and can be altered during cutting, and there is chipless cutting of various materials, such as plastic and copper, and for harder materials, such as steel and titanium.
The cutter has an access head, with tube guides and sighting openings, for easy application onto, and removal from, the tube, and there is a revolving head for rotation around the tube to be cut. The tool has a cutting blade and tube contacting rollers which automatically and continuously move in unison radially toward and away from the tube. Before that radial feed mechanism is engaged, in the first portion of the cutting head revolution, the tool performs an automatic and quick sizing of the tube. Also, after each tube has been cut, the tool quickly reverses rotation and automatically stops in an aligned position with the cutting blade and support rollers retracted and thereby ready for the next tube to be cut.
The tool has an adjustable cutter feed rate, which is useful for varying cutting speeds and for tubes having various material hardnesses. Also, the revolutions can be accomplished through self-contained battery power or from another power tool which readily driving connects to the tool of this invention. There is an automatic feed of the cutting blade into the tube, and that is achieved by a clutch acting on a feed drive where the rate can be controlled by varying the torque transmitted to the feed drive. Thus, there is a drive arrangement for moving the cutter blade around the tube, and there also is a feed arrangement for moving the cutter blade radially inward on the tube in the cutting process. The operative positions for the cutting action are automatically achieved and are under the control of a single control button, for instance.
Prior to each cutting action, the tool is automatically placed in a tube-receiving mode and in tube contact, and it is thus ready to cut. After cutting, the tool automatically sets itself into a condition to be ready to receive the next tube.
This tube cutter is easy to operate, it is fast in cutting completely through a tube, it produces a clean tube cut so that the cut edges end are smooth and circular, and it operates in close clearance locations, such as on job sites. Two gear trains are provided, one for rotation drive and one for cutting drive, and the two speeds are different from each other to thereby have the cutting speed lag the drive speed and thereby cam the cutting blade into the tube upon each revolution.
The tool also has power-take-off outlets for rotationally driving accessory instruments, including a tube de-burring tool and a tube rotating brush. That prepares the cut tube for subsequent soldering or other operations.